17 Feb 2022

Introduction:

While India’s solar power capacity is increasing, the country does not have a proper policy on managing the waste that is being generated from solar panels and its manufacturing process.

Main Concern:

Currently, India considers solar waste as a part of its generated electronic waste and thus doesn’t account for it independently. Also, the nation doesn’t have any commercially operated raw material solar e-waste recovering facility.

In Gummidipoondi, Tamil Nadu, a facility has been set up for the purpose of recovering solar e-waste recycling and recovery albeit it is a private firm.

What needs to be done?

• In India, solar waste is sold as scrap and it can lead to the increase of solar e-waste if proper recycling is not done.
• The government should divert its focus towards drafting a set of rules that will look into dealing with solar e-waste.
• The life cycle of a solar panel is 20 to 25 years, so the problem we are facing is yet to come, but when it will eventually catch up the nation will be dealing with a huge problem with most of the landfills being filled with solar waste.
• Hence, drafting a policy dealing with this is a must.

Solar Energy Capacity in India

• By this year, the government has a target of producing 100GW of solar energy. The nodal energy that looks into this is the Ministry of New and Renewable energy.
•  India has a National Solar Mission whose aim is to establish the nation as the global leader in the field of solar energy.
• Production-linked Incentives have been brought forward to promote this sector.
• PM Modi in association with the French President had launched the International Solar Alliance in the year 2015 with the vision of One World, One Sun, One Grid (OSOWOG).